Absurd stuff! Our school system has issued “belt-tightening” guidelines to save money. One of them is that teachers should “consider” getting rid of any small refrigerators and microwaves they have in their classrooms. Teachers can have perhaps one per grade level for all the teachers on that grade level to share. I am not part of a grade level. So that doesn’t apply to me.

It’s not a huge deal, but really! How much energy does a tiny refrigerator use in the 10 months of the year that it is used in a classroom each year? I’ve had my little refrigerator for about 15 years. I like having my cold Diet Coke and bottled water handy. I like keeping milk and salad dressing there - along with my leftovers for my lunch. I like keeping extra bottles of chocolate milk in there for Sophie after school or to take to Lily. I dislike keeping my food in a community refrigerator. Too much traffic through the teachers’ workroom - too many people I don’t know. I’ve seen people open other people’s food to see what’s in there. I’m just not a community refrigerator kind of person. Yuk!

I like having my little microwave, too. I sip on my coffee all morning, and I like heating it up for a few seconds off and on as I’m working with my various reading groups. It’s so nice having it right there. No instructional time is missed. I almost always bring my lunch and heat it up in the microwave. Both the refrigerator and the microwave help make my job easier. And Sophie likes a bag of popcorn for a snack after school.

This new “belt-tightening measure suggestion” is just stupid. Let’s turn off the lights when we’re not using them. Turn off the computers at night. Reduce, reuse, recycle. There are so many other more effective ways of saving money. Why even mention small refrigerators and microwaves?

My life is stressful enough right now without having the added stress of dealing with such stupidity. I’d like to rise above it, and put on a “happy face” and say everything is just hunky dory - but right now I just don’t have that in me. Someone who hasn’t been in a classroom in a long time came up with the idea. It gets so tiresome to have people who have no clue what teachers deal with each day making policy for teachers.

I think of the hours and days that I give to my job each year - hours and days that I’m not paid for. Weekends when I work for a few hours. Days during the summer that I spend getting my room set up. Virtually every school day when I arrive early and stay late - minutes and hours beyond what I’m paid for. I think of the extra professional development days that I don’t get credit for but that I attend anyway because I want to learn more and be a better teacher. Then I think of the thousands of dollars of my own money I spend on things I need because it’s such a royal pain to fill out all the paperwork to get the money to buy things through the school. Just today I spent over $35 of my own money on some items I need next week for my reading groups. Last year I spent my own money to buy a thumb drive so I can work on school stuff both at home and school.

As a teacher, I give and I give and I give. I was flexible and agreeable when I had to move my classroom not once but twice at the beginning of this school year. When my principal told me that he had decided to give the money that is usually budgeted for me this year to the classroom teachers instead, I said that was fine. They needed to build their classroom libraries. So this year I’ve spent even more of my own money buying regular supplies that I need.

I conserve and budget and plan. Yet the school system can’t afford me enough electricity to run a little refrigerator. It’s ridiculous - and insulting.

So, from now on I will not give the school system even one extra minute of my time. I will arrive at 8:20 on the nose each morning, and you can bet I will be out of there by 3:50 each afternoon. No more eating a quick 10-minute lunch at my desk while I work on my reading newsletter or plan my lessons. I will take my full 30 minutes - and try not to even think about school during that 30 minutes. No more providing “professional development” sessions for teachers before or after school. I’m done with it. If I can’t do what needs to be done during my time at school, it won’t get done.

The problem is that school systems DEPEND on teachers working on their own time. If teachers worked to the clock, schools would pretty much shut down. There is no way that teachers could do everything they’re required to do without spending considerable time outside their paid hours. And the folks who run the school systems take it for granted and don’t appreciate it. And when money needs to be saved, you can bet it’s the teachers who have to make sacrifices, and not the superintendent or other administrative folks.

Oh well. Stupidity runs rampant in public education anyway. I’m done with it.

Update: Okay, a clarification/correction: We weren’t told we HAD to get rid of our refrigerators. I went back and re-read the email we received. It was a “suggested” action which our principal mentioned in a faculty meeting as something he supported. After thinking it over, I decided that perhaps I had been a little too eager to consider a “suggestion” a directive. So, since I DO use my refrigerator and microwave fairly often, I decided that I would wait until I am told that I MUST get rid of them. So I plugged them both back in, and I will just wait and see what happens. I doubt, considering what’s going on in my life right now, that anyone will say anything to me about them. It still makes me angry that it was even suggested.

Note: Walking into school the other day, I met a teacher who mentioned that she had to order some supplies for her classes. She only needed to spend $50, but was told by the county office that she HAD to spend $100. So she bought $50 of unnecessary supplies in order to get the $50 of supplies that she needed. THAT is the perfect example of what I’m talking about. RIDICULOUS!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 12:45 am and is filed under Life's Absurdities, Teaching/Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.